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Etymology data from Wiktionary via Wiktextract (CC BY-SA 4.0). Chinese character data from the 說文解字, the Taiwan MOE 國語辭典簡編本 (CC BY-ND 3.0 TW) and HSK/TOCFL lists.

Explanations are written by a local model (gemma4) and only published after a verification pass against the cited sources. How it works.

Chinese

鮮

xiān
seafood; aquatic food
  • Phono-semantic compound 形聲
  • HSK 4
  • TOCFL 6
  • radical 魚
  • 17 strokes
  • 鱻
  • 尠

Etymology graph

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  • borrowed
  • derived
  • parts
  • meaning component
  • sound component
  • related
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Origin

Etymology 1

Phono-semantic compound (形聲 /形声, OC *sen, *senʔ, *sens): semantic 魚 (“fish”) + abbreviated phonetic 羴 (OC *qʰreːn, *qʰljen).

Alternatively, may be ideogrammic compound (會意 /会意): 魚 (“fish”) + 羊 (“sheep”) – delicious.

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *sar (“new; fresh”). Cognate with Proto-Tibeto-Burman *g-sar (“new; fresh”), whence Tibetan གསར་བ (gsar ba, “new; fresh”), Rawang angsar (“new”), Drung aksal (“new”), Mizo tʰarᴴ (“new”) (Schuessler, 2007); cognate with Tibetan གསར་ (gsar, “new”), Burmese ဆန်း (hcan:, “new, fresh”) (Hill, 2019).

Etymology 2

Etymology not clear (Schuessler, 2007).

From Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Lineage

  • inheritedProto-Sino-Tibetan*sar “new; fresh”
  • meaningChinese魚 “fish (Classifier: 條／条 m c h j mb x; 尾 m h mn mn-t; 隻／只 g mn x; 頭／头 mb md; 梗 w)”
  • soundChinese羴 “rank odor of sheep or goat”
  • ideaChinese羊 “caprid (e.g. sheep, goat, antelope, etc.) (Classifier: 隻／只 m c)”

Related: Proto-Tibeto-Burman *g-sar, Tibetan གསར་བ, Rawang angsar, Drung aksal, Mizo tʰarᴴ, Tibetan གསར་, Burmese ဆန်း

Meanings

character
  1. seafood; aquatic food
  2. delicious food; fresh food
  3. fresh; not stale
  4. brightly colored; gaily colored
  5. delicious; tasty
  6. not yet withered; not yet wilted (of flowers, grass, etc.)

Shuowen Jiezi 說文解字

鮮：魚名。出貉國。从魚，羴省聲。

Xu Shen, c. 100 CE — the first analytical dictionary of Chinese characters.

國語辭典 definitions

  1. 少。 例：鮮見

© Ministry of Education, Taiwan — CC BY-ND 3.0 TW, shown unaltered.

How 鮮 was written 字形演變

  1. 鮮 in Bronze script
    Bronze
    金文
    Shang–Zhou
  2. 鮮 in Chu slips & silk script
    Chu slips & silk
    楚系簡帛
    Warring States
  3. 鮮 in Qin slips script
    Qin slips
    秦系簡牘
    Qin
  4. 鮮 in Small seal script
    Small seal
    說文小篆
    Shuowen, c. 100 CE
  5. 鮮 in Regular script
    Regular
    楷書
    since c. 200 CE

Historical forms collected by the legacy etymfun dataset; most characters have several attested variants.

Sources

  • Historical glyph forms (zdic.net 字形演变) — Rights unverified
  • HSK / TOCFL word lists — Facts (levels)
  • 教育部《國語辭典簡編本》 (Taiwan MOE) — CC BY-ND 3.0 TW
  • 說文解字 Shuowen Jiezi (Xu Shen, c. 100 CE) — Public domain
  • Wiktionary (via Wiktextract / kaikki.org) — CC BY-SA 4.0
  • Wiktionary: 鮮